Department of Germanic Languages & Literatures University of Toronto

Chair [on leave Fall 2022] & Associate Professor of German Contact info stefan.soldovieri@utoronto.ca St. George Campus Office University of Toronto Odette Hall 320 50 St. Joseph Street Toronto, ON M5S 3L5 Phone: 416-926-2323 Secretary: 416-926-2324 Office Hours tba Classes 2022-2023 On leave Fall 2022 Background Ph.D. University of Wisconsin-Madison BA Duke University Freie Universität Berlin Universität Freiburg Teaching Interests German Cinema and Cinema Studies, 20th-21st Century German Literature and Cultural Studies, Cold War Culture, Popular Culture, The Future, Tactical German Studies Research Interests Remaking the Movies in German Cinemas: Art, Industry, Globalization The project opens up a new perspective on German cinema, examining the largely unappreciated role of the remake in the history of German cinemas from the beginnings of the medium in the mid-1890s to our multi-media and global present. Considering German reprises of domestic and international precursors, foreign reworkings of German classics, and concept films that self-consciously reflect on the idea of remaking itself, I explore the different modes of remaking as historically shifting and multivalent forms of cultural recycling. The remake phenomenon highlights the tensions between art and industry that are frequently ignored in German film studies. The project’s attention to the frequently transnational valence of the ... Read More »

Principal, University College (on leave 2024-25) Professor of German and Medieval Studies 2024-25 Senior Research Fellow, Humboldt Centre, University of Bayreuth Contact info markus.stock@utoronto.ca Office University College 15 King’s College Circle, Room 165 Toronto, ON M5S 3H7 CANADA Tel. 416-978-7516 Office Hours By appointment: Please contact markus.stock@utoronto.ca Classes 2024-25 Professor Stock is on a planned administrative leave to conduct research. Background Dr. phil. University of Göttingen, 2000 Markus Stock teaches German languages, literatures, and cultures of the Middle Ages. He is cross-appointed to the Centre for Medieval Studies, where he teaches courses on medieval German romance and heroic epic, philological methodologies, and Old Saxon. Markus Stock supervises MA and PhD students specializing in medieval and early modern (pre-1600) German literature and culture. He currently accepts supervisions of individuals who wish to specialize in these areas in the Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures or the Centre for Medieval Studies. Potential applicants are invited to send informal email inquiries to him. Markus Stock’s research and his teaching are situated in medieval German literatures, manuscript studies, and digital philology. He directs the international research project Medieval Undergrounds: A Cultural History of Extraction, funded by SSHRC. He has authored, edited, or co-edited over ... Read More »

Professor of German and Comparative Literature Contact info john.zilcosky@utoronto.ca Office University of Toronto Odette Hall 303 50 St. Joseph Street Toronto, ON M5S 3L5 Secretary: 416-926-2324 Office Hours Wednesdays, 5-6 pm (Northrop Frye Hall 214) Classes 2024-2025 Fall term: GER210HF Poets and Power: Art, Media and the Nazis COL5154HF Searching for Sebald: Fiction, Exile, and the Natural History of Destruction Spring term: GER1661HS Modernism in Context COL5125HS Literature, Trauma, Modernity   Background John Zilcosky is Professor of German and Comparative Literature at the University of Toronto, where he writes about modern European literature, psychoanalysis, the art of travel, and the history of sports. His books include Kafka’s Travels (MLA Scaglione Prize winner for best book in German Studies), Writing Travel, Uncanny Encounters, The Allure of Sports, The Language of Trauma, and Alternative Temporalities. The Times Literary Supplement and the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung have reviewed his work. The Humboldt Foundation, the US National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Canadian Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council have granted fellowships to him, and he is honorary president of the International Comparative Literature Association’s Research Committee on Literary Theory. The German government awarded him the Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel Prize for outstanding achievements in ... Read More »

Course Instructor Faculty of Arts & Science Postdoctoral Fellow in the Centre for Medieval Studies Contact landon.reitz@utoronto.ca Office Hours Tue. and Thurs. 3-4 in Lillian Massey Building, 314A Classes 2024-25 GER 100 Introduction to German GER 300 Intermediate German II Background Ph.D. University of California, Berkeley MA University of California, Berkeley BA University of Pennsylvania Research Interests Looking Up from the Page: Imaginative Medieval Reading Practices This project examines the historical role of the fictional reader in the hermeneutic, media-technological, and aesthetic developments of medieval German literature. I analyze scenes of reading and other representations of reading within medieval texts to examine this evolving cultural practice during the technological, cultural, scientific, and religious transformations of the European Middle Ages. Amid the digitalization of our modern reading practices and reading cultures, my research into the literary representations of reading demonstrates how, historically, reading practices, developments in media and technology, and imaginative literature have shaped the practice of reading as well as its function in society. The Futures of the Medieval World This transdisciplinary project explores the cultural practices of the European Middle Ages that engaged and engendered conceptions of the future. It investigates medieval means for gathering knowledge about the future, ... Read More »

PhD Student Contact pia.amelung@mail.utoronto.ca Office Hours tba Background tba Read More »

PhD Student Contact tamara.schaad@mail.utoronto.ca   Office Hours tba Read More »

M.A. Student Contact thisiscindy.cao@mail.utoronto.ca  Read More »

PhD Candidate Contact jacob.hermant@mail.utoronto.ca Office Hours tba Courses GER 360HF Intermediate Yiddish, Fall 2023 Background My research focuses on representations of nature and climate in diasporic Jewish literatures, specifically from Yiddish, German, and English, as well as 20th-century Jewish thought. I also work more broadly on Yiddish and Jewish literary studies and cultural history. I received my BA in 2020 from the University of King’s College in Halifax, with combined honours in Contemporary Studies and Theatre, and a minor in Early Modern Studies. I completed my MA in 2021 at the University of Toronto’s Centre for Comparative Literature and the collaborative program in Jewish Studies, and I began my doctoral studies in 2022 in the Yiddish stream of the Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures, as well as the collaborative program in Jewish Studies. Read More »

M.A. Student Contact savannah.bein@mail.utoronto.ca Office Hours Monday 11am-12pm Thursdays 1pm-2pm Classes 2022-23 GER100S LEC0301 Background Graduated from University of Toronto in 2020 with a major in Environmental Studies and minors in both French and German languages. I’ve previously lived in Freiburg, Germany where I completed an internship in sustainable agriculture. Currently I am an M.A. student with the German department, with my studies focusing on the influence of trees in German culture and activism. Read More »

PhD Candidate Contact info jm.evjen@mail.utoronto.ca Office University of Toronto Odette Hall Rm 311 50 St. Joseph Street Toronto, ON M5S 3L5 Office Hours TBA Classes 2022-2023 GER100Y, Fall & Winter Background John is a PhD candidate at the University of Toronto. His research focuses on relationships between humans and other animals in contemporary German fiction and the implications for literature resultant of these relationships. Since completing his MA at the University of Toronto, John has been involved in many capacities at uToronto such as the Graduate Education Council, Graduate Academic Appeals Board, and German and Yiddish Graduate Student Association. Apart from the academy, John spends his spare time with his dog and wife, mixing music, and reading poetry. Read More »